A friend and I have been discussing the XP on a Mac prize that was started back in January, and my friend believes that the unique circumstances of that particular situation make recreating it to find another interesting but difficult technical solution unlikely. In fact, he said he’d offer to match the first $10,000 in donations anyone else contributed to the prize on top of a little side wager we’ve got going on. I need help coming up with a prize meets his criteria, though:
A) It must be legal. (Otherwise, cracking Apple’s or Microsoft’s DRM would be perfect.)
B) It must be achievable in six months
C) It can’t require onerous amounts of capital to participate
D) It must excite the imagination of enough of the public that some would be interested in contributing to the prize.
Please help me prove my friend wrong, win our bet and help the world find a useful solution to a problem. What do you think would make a good challenge?
Not a direct answer to your question, but the challenge you spoke of certainly wasn’t the first of it’s kind. A site called Nuclear Elephant ran a similar one to hack Verizon’s Motorola phone to allow OBEX. I can’t remember how much the pot got up to, but it was substantial.
As it turns out, the hardware itself didn’t allow for OBEX so everyone who contributed to the pot got their money back. My Google skillz ain’t so polished, so I can’t figure out exactly how high the pot got.
Anyway, point being that you’ve already won, since a similar pot was established before that one.
I wasn’t aware of the Verizon/OBEX prize, but my friend refuses to allow me to use a previous example as proof. (I also pointed out The Methuselah Foundation’s MPrize.) When I told him that “I bet I could do it,” he said he’d take that bet and even put up the money. However, now I need to think of a compelling prize that meets his criteria.